he had come with
Mrs. Meldrum that lady would have taken advantage of the interval to pay
a visit to some other box--doubtless the box at which Flora had just been
looking. Mrs. Meldrum didn't account for the jewels, but the revival of
Flora's beauty accounted for anything. She presently moved her eyes over
the house, and I felt them brush me again like the wings of a dove. I
don't know what quick pleasure flickered into the hope that she would at
last see me. She did see me: she suddenly bent forward to take up the
little double-barrelled ivory glass that rested on the edge of the box
and to all appearance fix me with it. I smiled from my place straight up
at the searching lenses, and after an instant she dropped them and smiled
as straight back at me. Oh her smile--it was her old smile, her young
smile, her very own smile made perfect! I instantly left my stall and
hurried off for a nearer view of it; quite flushed, I remember, as I went
with the annoyance of having happened to think of the idiotic way I had
tried to paint her. Poor Iffield with his sample of that error, and
still poorer Dawling in particular with _his_! I hadn't touched her, I
was professionally humiliated, and as the attendant in the lobby opened
her box for me I felt that the very first thing I should have to say to
her would be that she must absolutely sit to me again.

CHAPTER XIII

She gave me the smile once more as over her shoulder, from her chair, she
turned her face to me. "Here you are again!" she exclaimed with her
disgloved hand put up a little backward for me to take. I dropped into a
chair just behind her and, having taken it and noted that one of the
curtains of the box would make the demonstration sufficiently private,
bent my lips over it and impressed them on its finger-tips. It was given
me however, to my astonishment, to feel next that all the privacy in the
world couldn't have sufficed to mitigate the start with which she greeted
this free application of my moustache: the blood had jumped to her face,
she quickly recovered her hand and jerked at me, twisting herself round,
a vacant challenging stare. During the next few instants several
extraordinary things happened, the first of which was that now I was
close to them the eyes of loveliness I had come up to look into didn't
show at all the conscious light I had just been pleased to see them flash
across the house: they showed on the contrary, to my confusion,